Blowing on a dandelion puffball, 
tiny pods take off into wild blueness,
a silken dream sequence in a film.
Other seeds stick like burrs to a sweater	
or heart, till they are wrenched off and told
to go or grow where they will. 
The coconut tree is a marvel. It bends far
towards the ocean to shed large green pods;
bombshell babies float for months 
till washed ashore.
Like the coconut, the sycamore lets her children go far.
Its pods spin like helicopter vanes, whirring away from parenthood.

Others have to be kicked out. 
Firm inside the pod, Himalayan balsam seeds dry out.
Like dynamite sticks, they explode, blasted a hundred metres away.
Hidden behind seductive fleshy fruit, some seeds are eaten, pass 
through the steamy entrails of a monkey and out as warm monkey manure.
Pine cones wait the longest. Stashed by clever squirrels as winter food, most are reclaimed.
The forgotten claim their identity, grow back to stately sighing heights.
Else, fallen below their parents, they await their death or felling,
siblings outpacing each other 
to claim their place in the ether
of the mountain sun.